AuthorTopic: NIKU VII (Read 208062 times)

Thanks Richie.Now, the time and date on the footage matches the information in the expedition log. The footage is exremely promising to say the least. The quality of the footage is 100% better than I expected. Ric deserves the smile, as do the rest of the team.

Waiting anxiously...if they found an airplane wing, then there have been some very quiet researchers.... first news reports said nothing was found but that the video and sonar would have to be analyzed. Now we have a short clip showing a guy on the research boat looking at what appears to be solid man made objects...why was it reported nothing was found? odd.

Screen shots of the video from Huff Post. Did they find NR16020?Ric, what is the round object the finger is pointing to in the bottom picture?Was that something known to be on the wing of and Electra LE 10?

Thanks for posting the link RichieThe "wing" sonar image at 42 seconds could be from when the Dailies mentioned promising targets that ended up being boulders or dismissed as Norwich City skeletonized hull. Note the date on the monitor was edit: July17th for the video at 56 seconds so maybe the Dailies can hint at what was going on then. Probably NC debrisIm looking forward to seeing the adventure after following the dailies.

manmade for a fact. But what. Wreckage from the Norwich or plane.very interesting the 3 white circular objects in a straight line.Can't imagine what those are....

Dave, I would think if that was from the Norwich it would be more rust colored and not light colored as in aluminum from a plane. The circular objects could be for the fuel filling ports. I think there were three fuel tanks in each wing.

Dave, I would think if that was from the Norwich it would be more rust colored and not light colored as in aluminum from a plane. The circular objects could be for the fuel filling ports. I think there were three fuel tanks in each wing.

Bob, yes three fuel tanks per wing but there were only two fuel filling ports and they were in the engine nacelles.

Waiting anxiously...if they found an airplane wing, then there have been some very quiet researchers.... first news reports said nothing was found but that the video and sonar would have to be analyzed. Now we have a short clip showing a guy on the research boat looking at what appears to be solid man made objects...why was it reported nothing was found? odd.

The Discovery Channel have first priority Dave which is only fair I guess. They are one of the major sponsors.

APIn a 1937 file photo, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, pose in front of their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in Los Angeles prior to her historic attempt to circle the globe. They flew east, making stops in the United States, South America, Africa and Asia before the final Pacific legs. They disappeared trying to reach Howland Island on the way to Hawaii. On Aug. 19, a Discovery Channel special was scheduled to tell about a new underwater search for the plane's wreckage off a remote Pacific island.

But it's way too soon to slap labels, like failure, on the recent $2.2 million undersea search near a remote Pacific island that was documented for a Discovery Channel special set to air Sunday at 10 p.m.

"The jury is still very much out on this trip," said expedition organizer Ric Gillespie. ". . . "We're just now getting to the point were we can review the video to see what we saw."

Only this weekend was high-resolution video delivered to West Coast forensic imagining specialist Jeff Glickman for analysis, said Gillespie, executive director of a The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), based in Wilmington, Del.

"It's been a big job just getting the footage in viewable format," he said.

In mid-July, off the island of Nikumaroro, in waters too deep to dive, a ship-tethered remote-operated vehicle (ROV) spent days relaying fuzzy images of a steep sea bottom coated with sediment and strewn with clumps of coral that can mimic metal shapes.

"We could have easily missed something in the real-time standard-definition video that will show up in the high definition," Gillespie said.

Detecting sediment-covered parts of a Lockheed Model 10 Electra isn't like recognizing the Titanic, he said.

Also just starting to be scrutized: "volumes" of side-scanning sonar data collected by a torpedo-like autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which roamed almost a mile down.

If new clues are found in time, the hope is to reveal them on Sunday's show. Thoroughly examining all of the images and data, though, could continue for weeks or even months.

Science takes time, Gillespie said, noting that he's still waiting from results of a third round of DNA testing on bone fragments found during a 2010 visit to the tiny uninhabited atoll, part of the Republic of Kiribati.

New findings or not, the show shouldn't lack for intrigue and adventure, Gillespie said, as it recounts the history of the mystery, lays out tantalizing though inconclusive clues collected by TIGHAR over seven expeditions since 1988, and chronicles mission-jeopardizing setbacks encountered during the latest search.

The evidence fits the theory that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan crashed off the island, where she may have lived her final days, perhaps using a spear fashioned with a knife to catch birds and fish, Gillespie said.

A 1937 report by Navy flyers spoke of signs of "recent habitation" on the island. An American-style woman's shoe, consistent with ones Earhart wore, was discovered during a 1991 TIGHAR expedition. Evidence of a campfire was found in 1997, consistent with reports that near the camp site, a bottle, a can and human bones were found. A doctor's 1941 analysis concluded those since-lost bones were from a man, but an expert told TIGHAR the measurements were more consistent with a woman.

The latest expedition was launched in early July with much fanfare, because even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed support in March after the discovery of a 1937 photograph showed what could be landing gear sticking out of the water off Nikumaroro.

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